Samara Douma:
Ultrasound technology has advanced beyond the classic black-and-white 2D (two-dimensional) imaging to offer clearer and higher-quality images. Three-dimensional imaging, as the name suggests, displays a 3D image of the child, making their facial features distinguishable beyond an outline. A 4D ultrasound captures multiple 3D images and combines them to create a video of the child’s movement, possibly capturing a smile or yawn. A 5D image shows the pre-born child with more defined features and has better resolution.
Josie Luetke, Campaign Life Coalition’s director of education and advocacy, told The Interim that the advancements of ultrasound photos “help convey the humanity of the pre-born.” This has caused many pro-abortionists to acknowledge that there is a child in the womb who is not ‘just a clump of cells’, shifting the discussion to the rights of the mother compared to the child.
These technologies have also had an impact, especially among young women, in raising questions about the ethics of abortion.
The New York Post reported Sarah’s (name changed at request) story, a young woman in a rocky relationship who found herself pregnant. Due to the current state of her relationship with her boyfriend, Sarah chose to abort her pre-born child.
She had an ultrasound done to confirm her pregnancy, but when Sarah saw her child in that ultrasound, she knew she had to keep him.
Danielle Pitzer, director of sanctity of human life for Focus on the Family, said that “ultrasounds make the pregnancy real,” often prompting mothers to choose life when they see their child on the screen. Certain states have even required that physicians show and provide the mother with an ultrasound before committing an abortion.
Some pro-abortionists believe that this should not be a requirement because an ultrasound is not always medically necessary and, as the Guttmacher Institute says, it would “personify the fetus and dissuade an individual from obtaining abortion.”
The Ultrasound Program, run by the Ontario State Council Knights of Columbus, seeks to do just that, by providing pro-life doctors in Ontario with “one of the most powerful tools in (the) pro-life arsenal,” the ultrasound machine.
The Knights of Columbus has provided three ultrasound machines to pro-life doctors in Ontario, located in Ottawa, Brampton, and Hamilton, with plans to purchase a fourth in Sudbury. This program has reached beyond Ontario, helping two doctors in Calgary and British Columbia — as well as donating approximately 2000 machines globally.
Alex Schadenberg, state chairman for the Knight’s ultrasound program in Ontario, told The Interim that “the key to the ultrasound machine program is the fact that a positive pro-life physician or ultrasound technician is operating the machine.” When a woman feels supported and receives a positive response to her pregnancy, she will often become optimistic about her child.
Having that encouragement, as well as seeing and bonding with the child, plays a big part in a woman’s decision to choose life.
At the 2019 Alive conference in New York, March for Life and Focus on the Family performed a live 4D ultrasound on a big screen in Times Square, attracting more than 400 people. Not only do these photos offer a “window into the womb”, Luetke said, but “the photos (also) remind us who it is we are fighting for.”
